Book #15: Shiver, Maggie Stiefvater
Apr. 14th, 2010 09:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
grav_ityTeenage werewolf, true love, angst...wait! Come back! It's not what it looks like!
I had unreasonably high hopes for this book, and I know it. When![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
laura_josephsen first posted about it, and I began following the author online, I had an inkling that this book might do for werewolves what True Blood (and also The Vampire Diaries) did for vampires. Stiefvater is just so...down to earth about things like this. But then I read the back of the book and thought "Oh...dear", and I wasn't sure.
Turns out, it was a FALSE ALARM, because the back of the book is clearly designed to entice Twihards into reading it, and the book itself isn't anywhere near that sappy (most of the time).
SO:
The "gimmick" employed by this novel (and I love a good gimmick!), is that each chapter begins with the temperature. Since Sam (and the others) change into wolves when it's cold, the temperature would give you some idea how frantic the chapter was going to be. The downside, of course, was that the temperature was in Fahrenheit, which meant I kept thinking "Man, this is unseasonably warm for Minnesota"! before 32=0 clicked in my brain. I found it really interesting and effective way of setting the tone for each chapter before you started reading it.
It was a little bit difficult to keep track of how many days had gone past...but I think that was kind of the point.
The beginning, and Grace's attack, was just chilling. I adored both Olivia and Rachel, and hope that Rachel is in LINGER in a bigger way (I also hope the same for Olivia, but I can't imagine she won't be. If she takes down Shelby and becomes the alpha, I might die of happiness).
As for Grace and Sam themselves...they have a really cool relationship. According to Sam, they've been dating for six years (ie. from Grace's attack onwards), because that's how long he's been waiting for her to make the change. When he says it so casually, she laughs...and then she realizes he's right. Even before she knew what he was, she knew he was (and thought of him as) her wolf. And wolves mate for life. (Their shared condition also makes it possible to handwave their ages, on account of them both having been at least part wolf for the last six to ten years, which is more than enough time for their wolf selves to grow up.)
I read an essay written by Stiefvater a few weeks ago where she talked about how people react to her books and how they are always full of teenagers falling permanently in love. Since that's more or less what happened to her, she went from "never really dates" to "engaged" in less than a month, she has no problem selling it, and it's a variation on "writing what you know" that I find fascinating, because almost no one is lucky enough to know that, and yet here she is, writing something that's not even a far stretch from the truth! For the most part, I have no problem buying Love At First Sight (Or Shortly Thereafter) as long as the characters are in play...and Stiefvater does that every time.
There are two constants in a Stiefvater novel: music and absentee parents (who may or may not be on your side). Sam thinks in song lyrics when he's human. It's how he knows he's human. That totally broke my heart. When they make this into a movie, that had better not change! (Grace totally calls him on being a walking stereotype after she finds out about the music, which is something I appreciate.) In terms of parents, what Sam's did was so awful I had to read the paragraph twice before I understood it, and what Beck did was equally wretched, but I understood why Sam forgave him (and I totally cried during that scene!). The only thing missing, really, from the book was Grace making a comment about how her parents' crappy parenting skills a) saved her life, and b) gave her the chance to save Sam, Jack and Olivia. I suppose I can wait for the sequel. ;)
The last thing I found really neat about this book was that the characters talk about werewolf mythology in a very real way. Grace and Sam have entire discussions about whether it's magic or science (on the basis that science can be cured and magic just is), and in the end, the cure turns out to be the Power of Love, supplemented by BACTERIAL MENINGITIS. Which is certainly no worse than the aliens in Signs being allergic to water, or us driving away the Independence Day aliens with a computer virus.
I know there are quite a few of you who like wolves. You should read this book, if you get the chance. It's more lycanthropy than werewolf. And it's mostly wolf. I give it 8 out of 10, and I can't wait for LINGER to come out.
I had unreasonably high hopes for this book, and I know it. When
laura_josephsen first posted about it, and I began following the author online, I had an inkling that this book might do for werewolves what True Blood (and also The Vampire Diaries) did for vampires. Stiefvater is just so...down to earth about things like this. But then I read the back of the book and thought "Oh...dear", and I wasn't sure.Turns out, it was a FALSE ALARM, because the back of the book is clearly designed to entice Twihards into reading it, and the book itself isn't anywhere near that sappy (most of the time).
SO:
The "gimmick" employed by this novel (and I love a good gimmick!), is that each chapter begins with the temperature. Since Sam (and the others) change into wolves when it's cold, the temperature would give you some idea how frantic the chapter was going to be. The downside, of course, was that the temperature was in Fahrenheit, which meant I kept thinking "Man, this is unseasonably warm for Minnesota"! before 32=0 clicked in my brain. I found it really interesting and effective way of setting the tone for each chapter before you started reading it.
It was a little bit difficult to keep track of how many days had gone past...but I think that was kind of the point.
The beginning, and Grace's attack, was just chilling. I adored both Olivia and Rachel, and hope that Rachel is in LINGER in a bigger way (I also hope the same for Olivia, but I can't imagine she won't be. If she takes down Shelby and becomes the alpha, I might die of happiness).
As for Grace and Sam themselves...they have a really cool relationship. According to Sam, they've been dating for six years (ie. from Grace's attack onwards), because that's how long he's been waiting for her to make the change. When he says it so casually, she laughs...and then she realizes he's right. Even before she knew what he was, she knew he was (and thought of him as) her wolf. And wolves mate for life. (Their shared condition also makes it possible to handwave their ages, on account of them both having been at least part wolf for the last six to ten years, which is more than enough time for their wolf selves to grow up.)
I read an essay written by Stiefvater a few weeks ago where she talked about how people react to her books and how they are always full of teenagers falling permanently in love. Since that's more or less what happened to her, she went from "never really dates" to "engaged" in less than a month, she has no problem selling it, and it's a variation on "writing what you know" that I find fascinating, because almost no one is lucky enough to know that, and yet here she is, writing something that's not even a far stretch from the truth! For the most part, I have no problem buying Love At First Sight (Or Shortly Thereafter) as long as the characters are in play...and Stiefvater does that every time.
There are two constants in a Stiefvater novel: music and absentee parents (who may or may not be on your side). Sam thinks in song lyrics when he's human. It's how he knows he's human. That totally broke my heart. When they make this into a movie, that had better not change! (Grace totally calls him on being a walking stereotype after she finds out about the music, which is something I appreciate.) In terms of parents, what Sam's did was so awful I had to read the paragraph twice before I understood it, and what Beck did was equally wretched, but I understood why Sam forgave him (and I totally cried during that scene!). The only thing missing, really, from the book was Grace making a comment about how her parents' crappy parenting skills a) saved her life, and b) gave her the chance to save Sam, Jack and Olivia. I suppose I can wait for the sequel. ;)
The last thing I found really neat about this book was that the characters talk about werewolf mythology in a very real way. Grace and Sam have entire discussions about whether it's magic or science (on the basis that science can be cured and magic just is), and in the end, the cure turns out to be the Power of Love, supplemented by BACTERIAL MENINGITIS. Which is certainly no worse than the aliens in Signs being allergic to water, or us driving away the Independence Day aliens with a computer virus.
I know there are quite a few of you who like wolves. You should read this book, if you get the chance. It's more lycanthropy than werewolf. And it's mostly wolf. I give it 8 out of 10, and I can't wait for LINGER to come out.
